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My Tenacious/SE got rolled from medium hard cutting chores at my work (plastic bindings, tie rips and cardboard) a while back :mad: . Tossed it in my drawer until last night.

In the course of last night and this morning I resharpened the blade.

Edge is fine now.

Here's the sharpening station;

Nothing today, but yesterday I did a re-profiling on a Tenacious using a Gatco Edgemate.

It's been stropped fairly often, but this is the first time I've taken a stone to it. I went with 20 degrees using coarse, medium, fine and extra fine hones before a final stropping. My left arm now needs a toupee. :D

I've sharpened quite a few knives with that thing but it really does nave its limitations with narrower blades due to the way it's designed. I've been doing those freehand and starting to get the hang of it.

A few of the Gatco hones (the ceramic ones) are starting to wear and then I'll have to decide to either replace them with the diamond versions (I don't see ceramic working well on either my Millie or Native) or change systems entirely.

Evil D wrote:Practicing stropping with my Para 2 DLC tonight, picked up a cheap leather belt and i have some polishing compound around here somewhere. If i like the results i might put some decent money into a stropping setup.

A decent stropping setup is far from expensive. I used to do a lot of woodcarving and only paid about $20 for a two-sided leather strop that's about 12" long and 3" wide. For 20 bucks it's not even worth getting your hands dirty making one. Since you already have the compound.........

Damned if I can remember who I ordered mine from but there are plenty of woodcarving supply websites that can match that price.

NYRich wrote:A decent stropping setup is far from expensive. I used to do a lot of woodcarving and only paid about $20 for a two-sided leather strop that's about 12" long and 3" wide. For 20 bucks it's not even worth getting your hands dirty making one. Since you already have the compound.........

Damned if I can remember who I ordered mine from but there are plenty of woodcarving supply websites that can match that price.

Ebay has some good deals too;

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Leather-Strop-H ... 5f77b85c56

I think I'm gonna order that one right now actually...

Answering the original question: I mostly use my Royal Purple CTS-20CP PM2, for light chores, so I almost always simply strop the knife on my leather strop with Veritas Blade Honing Compound after each use, to keep the edge sharp. If it needs more work on the edge, I use the Sharp Maker at 30 deg and then strop.

Rwb1500 wrote:Ebay has some good deals too;

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Leather-Strop-H ... 5f77b85c56

I think I'm gonna order that one right now actually...

You know, I made my own, but at that price, that is an awesome value!

My 4 favorite EDC knives are very sharp right now. I think I'm going to try something new. I'm not going to touch them up every day or few days. I'm going to see how long it takes for one knife to get dull to the point that I actually have a problem cutting something. I don't mean it won't cut, just that the edge doesn't act like it always does now. Normally I'll use a strop or UF ceramic stone every couple of days just to maintain the ultimate sharpness that I'm capable of getting. I'm going to use the Sage1 then the Gayle Bradley only as my two "test" subjects. That's S30V and M4. Their edge angles are very close so that's good. What they cut will be whatever gets in their way so there is no telling about that.

Here's a picture of my favorites. I only post it because it has taken me 6 or 7 years and quite a few knives to come up with this set. :)
[ATTACH]18198[/ATTACH]

Jack

byrd meadowlark rescue plain edge. I was at work so I used a 0.99 cent two sided stone from Grizzly that I got on sale. I used it dry and then stropped on the inside of my leather belt. It was back to a working edge and box tape was no longer a challenge.

Just put a 40 degree inclusive edge on my brand new Military CTS-XHP. Man, that XHP sure takes an edge!

A Victorinox Forschner 10" blade. It's been raining all day so I took this old knife with an edge about as sharp as the spine and went to work. I put a really steep angle on it and it slips right through news paper tonight. Next to a Ladybug.